"People ask me who was the best athlete I ever coached," the former Auburn football coach told the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus, Ga. "Bo Jackson was the best athlete I ever coached. Frank Thomas was the second-best athlete. And I might have had it reversed."

Thomas will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. He could just as well have joined Dye and Jackson in the College Football Hall of Fame had he taken a different course, Dye said.

"If he had stuck with football, he'd be going in the Hall of Fame as a football player," Dye told Charles Goldberg of AuburnTigers.com, the AU athletic department's official web site.

Thomas went from Auburn baseball star to Major League All-Star for the Chicago White Sox. But the first sport that Thomas played at Auburn was football, arriving for the 1986 season after Jackson's senior campaign in 1985.

"He was a great high school prospect in both sports," Dye said. "When I went over to recruit him I said, 'I know you play football and baseball. We want to sign you to a football scholarship, but if you decide you want to play baseball, you can do that on a football scholarship.' That's what he did."

Thomas came to Auburn from Columbus High School in Georgia after being passed over in the 1986 baseball draft. On Comcast SportsNet Chicago's "Welcome to Cooperstown: Frank Thomas," he recalled how crushed he was when he didn't get picked.

"Not getting drafted out of high school was the worst moment of my life at that time because I knew that I was much better than pretty much half that draft," Thomas said. "It was a lot of guys I played with in high school. A lot of guys got drafted. I want to say seven, eight, nine guys got drafted, and I felt like I was the best player in the state. Most of the scouts played it off, 'Oh, you're just a football player playing baseball.' I took it serious because I knew what I had to give for baseball. They could have signed me out of high school for a dozen baseballs and a couple fungos. I was taking it hard because I wanted to play baseball.

"But thank God I had the focus and the desire and the ability to play another sport. Football was my second sport, but it was really my first sport because all the big schools were recruiting me to play football. I just made that decision. My dad (Frank Thomas Sr.) told me, he said, 'Hey, we got a full ride to Auburn. Let's go be a football player and walk onto the baseball team later.' He was right and that fire was burned there that I was going to be the best football player I could be ... and it turned out that going that extra yard for football made me a much better baseball player."

Thomas spent just one season in collegiate football. As a freshman tight end, he caught three passes for 45 yards for the 1986 Tigers, who posted a 10-2 record, closing the season with a 21-7 victory in the Iron Bowl before beating Southern Cal 16-7 in the Citrus Bowl.

Thomas suffered an ankle injury preparing for the 1987 football season that helped make up his mind to concentrate on baseball.

"Coach Dye told me at the time, 'You might want to start thinking about baseball,'" Thomas told CSN Chicago's Dan Hayes. "He told me that baseball could be my future. 'We have three guys right there with you (in football), same talent and same spring. You have a special talent here in baseball, and you might want to start thinking about that.' He was right."

Dye allowed Thomas to stay on his football scholarship even though he played only baseball his final two years on campus.

"Coach Dye called me one day," former Auburn baseball coach Hal Baird told AuburnTigers.com, "and said, 'How good a player is Frank?' I said, 'He's one of the best I've ever seen.' He asked, 'Can he make money for his family playing baseball?' I said, 'Without a doubt. He'll be a first-rounder.' He said, 'OK, that's what I really needed to know. He'll play baseball, but we'll keep him on football scholarship for as long as he's at Auburn.'"

Baird knew the Major League teams had made a mistake when they passed on Thomas coming out of high school.

"A lot of people have scrambled to come up with explanations as to why," Baird said. "I kind of laugh at that. The fact of the matter is a lot of professional scouts just missed him. A lot of them said, 'Well, we know he's going to Auburn to play football.' He should have drafted. But Auburn was the beneficiary."

Baird was reminded of what he had as soon as he saw Thomas swing for the first time in batting practice at Auburn.

"He hit an absolute rocket on one of the hardest-hit balls I've seen," Baird told AL.com's Brandon Marcello shortly after Thomas was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in January. "And I said, 'Well, that's our No. 4 hitter the next three years.'"

View full sizeFrank Thomas was a three-time All-SEC first baseman for Auburn.

Thomas hit a grand slam in his second baseball game for Auburn in 1987 against UAB. A quarter of a century after his final game for the Tigers, Thomas' name remains all over the Auburn record book. He's the only player in Auburn history to win the team Triple Crown twice, and he led the Tigers in home runs and RBIs in each of his three seasons. His .722 career slugging percentage and .527 career on-base average are the best in school history. He still ranks fifth in RBIs, third in home runs, fourth in extra-base hits, sixth in total bases, second in bases on balls and second in batting average on Auburn's career lists.

Thomas led the SEC in batting average at .385 and 1988 and .403 in 1989, and he topped the conference with 21 home runs in 1987. He was an All-SEC selection in all his Auburn seasons.

During Thomas' freshman season, the Tigers went 42-18 with a 20-11 SEC mark. Pitcher Gregg Olson had an 11-1 record with 10 saves in 42 relief appearances. Auburn went to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1978, but lost in the regional round.

The 1988 team, at 39-16 overall and 16-10 in conference play, did not reach the NCAA postseason after going two and out in the SEC tournament.

The 1989 team had a 44-20 overall record and went 12-12 in conference play, but it won the SEC tournament. After beating South Florida 9-3 and Clemson 14-7 in the Tallahassee Regional, Auburn had Florida State on the ropes before the Seminoles rallied to a 7-6 victory in the ninth inning. That sent the Tigers into an elimination game shortly afterward, and Clemson ended Auburn's season.

During the 1989 season, Thomas set school records for most walks with 73 -- 14 more than any other Auburn player has had in one year - and on-base average at .568. He hit .403 with 19 home runs, 83 RBIs and a .801 slugging percentage and was a consensus All-American.

This time, Major League teams could hardly wait to draft Thomas. He went with 1989's seventh pick to the White Sox. Thomas was the second Auburn player to be drafted in the first round, following Olson, who went with the fourth pick in 1988.

Thomas will become the first player from the SEC to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame. Hall of Famer Joe Sewell played at Alabama, but he did so before the formation of the SEC.